Ask anyone who’s been betrayed, and they’ll tell you that the “knife in the back” is not only a metaphor but an actual physical sensation. It’s been over ten years since I felt double-crossed by a business partner and walked away empty-handed from what I had believed was my purpose in life.
The experience broke something inside me, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when I realize that what broke was my naive and innocent belief that a good, honest conversation and mutual compromise could overcome any conflict. Sometimes, nothing can.In the immediate months following my betrayal, I felt suspicious of everyone.
I wondered: if someone could encourage me to open up to them only to use that information against me later on, couldn’t anyone? I started to wonder if promises and agreements were nothing more than ruses to hide ulterior motives. Was I a fool? Was everyone out to get me? These dangerous questions threatened to put all my relationships under a dark cloud of mistrust.Incessant suspicion was an uncomfortable mental place to be in.
I had always prided myself on my trusting nature. But this meant I had often shared intimacies with people before they had earned the right to hear them.
I had believed that a strong, reciprocal relationship could always outweigh personal ambition. I hadn’t considered that often, blind ambition is precisely the energy that destroys personal relationships.With time and deliberate inner work, I uncovered the hidden gem inside the pain of my betrayal: a richer connection to my intuition, which then helped me establish confidence as I stepped out to build better relationships, and trust, once again. Here are the steps I went through to heal from betrayal and trust myself and
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Life advice
trust
Betrayal
